


Smoke to Draw a Crowd

by soda_coded



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: 'Wait and Hope' coda, Character Study, F/M, Oral Sex, Parent/Child Incest, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:40:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24820975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soda_coded/pseuds/soda_coded
Summary: After the wedding, Jessica escorts Malcolm home and tucks him into bed.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Jessica Whitly
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	Smoke to Draw a Crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this directly following the episode, only just now had the time to clean it up.

Ainsley had been right about the green dress, Jessica had been sure the second she’d slid it on. She’d always worn green well, embers on live wood made lots of smoke to draw a crowd. She’d debuted in a green dress, even though white was traditional. Her father had been traditional, but even then she hadn’t.

This thought has her pulling the pins from her hair, carelessly, alcohol making her fingers loosely jointed. She hands them off to Malcolm when he helps her from the car, nodding thanks to Alfonso, who holds the door. She watches him puzzle at the tiny bits of metal, before losing them to the safety of his pockets. Her hair is cool and heavy on her neck, but it feels good on the bare skin of her shoulder. Everything is faster than it should be, she thinks, standing on the curb. A clipshow. Malcolm’s hand on her forearm, tugging her upstairs and why are they in his flat?

“Why are we slumming it?” Jessica asks, voice arch and Malcolm offers a half-smile. Too sad for banter then, her poor boy. He’d always been so sensitive. “Sorry, sweetie.”

“It’s your property.” Malcolm says, but he’s so sweet he seems to accept her apology at face value. Thank God. Jessica is far too gone to fight. Now, years later, that’s what she attributes the long life of her marriage to. That she had stayed drunk and tired.

Sometimes she wonders how it’s any different from how she lives now… safer, she supposes, at least.

Tonight is different. Tonight had been… oh,  _ lovely _ . Jessica had always loved weddings. Her own had been gorgeous. A real pity about the rest…

A real fucking pity, Jessica thinks, and a laugh snorts it’s way out of her.

“Come on, sit down, Mother.” Malcolm says, and if he’s still calling her that, still smiling as he bends to slip her heels from her feet, he wants it, just like she does. Thank. God.

“Unzip me first.” Jessica says demandingly, loving the way he obeys. She spins for him and his hands brush through her hair to find her zipper and drag a line of sensation down her back.

“Better, Mother?” He asks, so warm on her bare skin, and Jessica nods. Maybe the case had been good for him… it had certainly been a while since he’d been lively enough for this. She swallows. Kind of wishes she’d snagged an extra bottle from the wedding.

“Yeah.  _ Yes _ , Malcolm, thank you.” Jessica says, keeping the drape of her dress pressed loosely to her form, arms tight to her bodice. Sits carefully and holds her leg out so Malcolm can start on her stockings. “You’re so good to me. And goodness, so brave… too brave, maybe.”

His hand slip past the snaps of her garter and press on her center instead. Such smart, clever hands. Just like his father. She’d never understand why such smart, clever hands all tend to violence.

When they could just do… oh,  _ that _ .

Jessica shudders brilliantly, head tipping back, hair falling over the back of the chair, legs shaking.

“It was nothing.” Malcolm says, self-deprecatingly. Glances down and then back up, eyes too knowledgeable to be looking at her. Not her sweet boy. “Can we keep your stockings on?”

Jessica giggles, the sound bursting out, bubbles rising from a glass.

“Yes, baby, oh, whatever you want, just don’t stop-!”

She lets out a moan, and Malcolm pushes her panties to the side. She’d shaved that morning, hair up, bubbles to her neck. She hadn’t even glanced at her closet then, hadn’t thought much of Malcolm except for hoping that Tahiti suited him.

Two of his fingers filled her deliciously, warm and full, jerking in her, fast,  _ violent _ and Jessica groans, hands clenching the wooden arm of her chair to keep from gripping his hair.

Malcolm didn’t like it when his hair was pulled. Jessica questions what he gets up to on his own, sometimes… where his bruises came from, his sad, shadowed eyes.

“Malcolm.” She breathes, and his thumb comes down on her cloth covered clit, holding steady, forcing her to grind onto his hand, hips shaking. “Please, I-”

“You’re so beautiful like this, Mother.” Malcolm says, and Jessica tightens around his fingers like a ring.

“Oh baby, oh fuck, you’re going to make me cum… you’re going to make Mommy cum, Malcolm…”

“Please, Mother.” He breathes, having undone her with so few touches, her dress fluttering from her, her pale thighs trembling, brushing his arm, knee bumping his chest. He doesn’t mind, her good boy. He’s never minded, not with her. “Let go. Cum for me.”

She tightens up, muscles and skin, a hand in a glove and her eyes slip closed, overwhelmed. When she comes back to herself, he’s watching her, lightly petting her mons, her neatly trimmed patch. Kept mostly to prove that even at her age, she’s no bottle job.

“Wow baby.” She tells him, able to hear the delight in her own voice, and Malcolm smiles for her, unshadowed blue eyes. His hand is shiny where it lay against her thigh. She spread her legs a bit more… just to keep him from staining her dress. It was fine if some got on the stockings, that’s what they were there for. “That was amazing. Impressive. I didn’t think you could make Mommy cum that hard…”

“Can I do it again… Mommy?” Malcolm asks, and just as always some ancient lock, weakened by her desperate foolish love clicked open, gushing with a love too big for the bonds they’d been destined to share. For her darling boy, her Malcolm, who she’d always known would grow up nothing like his father, but instead like her. A Milton, through and through.

Even in this… this shared weakness. Malcolm’s hand is already petting her again through her panties, his touch light, just how she needs it when she’s just cum, and wants to cum again.

“Let’s go to bed then, darling boy.” She tells him, and Malcolm, agreeable as he so rarely is these days, stands without further complaint. Offers her his hand when she wobbles on stocking-ed feet.

“No longer mad about ‘slumming it’?” Malcolm teases and Jessica gives him a smile. She holds one hand around her middle, just to keep up the pretense of decency, but drops even that at the foot of his bed. Sheds green velvet like leaves, so she can bear petals. A freeing feeling, moreso when Malcolm’s hands release her bra band.

“Better?” He asks, rubbing at the red imprints the tight elastic had left on her skin. The price you had to pay if you wanted cleavage under your chin, and didn’t trust the surgeon’s knife. She’d made that mistake once,  _ trusting _ , and all it had given her was two marvelous children and enough nightmares for two lifetimes. “You seemed so tense, at the wedding.”

“Just your father.” Jessica says, and maybe that was too much because his hands leave her skin, taking marvelous warmth with them. She’s barely had time to shiver though, and they’re back, teasing and tugging at the matching band to her now thoroughly wet panties. “He follows me everywhere.”

“Me too.” Is the pensive reply. That and his hands, so steady for now, balancing her weight easily as she lifts first one foot and then the other foot free of her soiled delicates.

She screams as those hands yank her, both ankles at once, toppling her onto the bed to thrash and bounce. He’s grinning over her, loosening his tie when she rights herself scowling, even though he looks so good like this. Hard to believe this… this  _ man _ came from her body.

“Malcolm!” She scolds, trying to be stern, even as the words purr from her throat. “No need to roughhouse. Just ask-!”

“Sorry, mother.” Malcolm says, but he sounds entirely unrepentant. She really ought to make him say it again, make him sound truly sorry, but the wine has gone straight to her head and besides his mouth has such nicer uses. She loves it when her boy is nice. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Where you’re going, you better.” She warns him, laughing when the smile he presses between her legs is all teeth. Gasps when his tongue follows, hot and slippery around her clit. No nonsense, just steady attentive motion. She reaches for his hair, stops and places her hands on her thighs instead, feeling the muscle quiver from the strain. “Oh god, baby, yes.”

He hums against her, and like always Jessica wonders what he’s thinking about. About how she sounds or tastes maybe, or how his day at work had gone, or none of those. The only thing he’s inherited from his father is a talent for being completely inscrutable. When he wants to be and when he doesn't. More a curse than a gift, she’d often thought, during his long lonely school years.

She shies away from the thought. This- this  _ thing _ had happened much later, after he was far from that pale lonely boy, after he’d stepped away from his father’s reaching grasp.

This had started in Quantico, when he’d been trapped, long days at the academy. She’d only been able to see him on the weekends, where she’d go and pick him up, take him out. Like a soldier’s gal, sneaking him out of the base for a few hours of fun.

Martin had drifted out of Malcolm’s peculiar clinging orbit, and Jessica had drifted so far in that she began to not know how to feel when hapless waiters and polite hostesses thought they were together. Malcolm didn’t help, casually acting the part. Tidy clip of bills, just to tip- the card for the rest. A hand on the small of her back, to guide her to and from their nook, and he’d started growing that damnable stubble, just enough to scratch when he brushed her cheek with kisses hello or goodbye.

His tongue thrums her, vibrant, violent motion, just before his teeth scrape across her sensitive clit and Jessica moans, the sound loud and echoing in the airy design of his loft. She’d decorated this one herself, had taken her time- had no idea she was decorating for her son. Not until he’d called and told her the FBI were idiots and incompetents who’d thrown away an admirable genius- he hadn’t told it like that, but Jessica knew something of people.

Had seen their good and bad in the rise and fall of her time as a socialite. Malcolm… her darling is special. Very special. He is going to be something someday… His lips wrap around her and suck, and suck, nearly wrenching the pleasure from her, until she’s limp and shaking, wrung out from the force of her orgasm.

“Oh, Malcolm.” She tells him. “I love you, baby.”

“I love you too, mom.” He tells her, crawling on hands and knees onto the bed to hover over her naked form. His hands are unsteady, although they didn’t shake. They can’t seem to settle. Rising to her bare shoulders to drop and knead her naked breasts, to fit into her waist and pull her up closer to him. To where she can feel the devilish heat between his legs press against her own, delicious and wanted. Already she was bearing up, spreading for him like an eager girl in the backseat of a car… Jessica had never even been that sort of girl.

No, her affairs had been quiet and lush… friends of her fathers, colleagues of friends- older men… competent…. The head of his cock slips and skids around her sopping entrance, Malcolm biting his lip above her in concentration. She’d been smart with her heart and look where it has gotten her…

Her breath punches out of her in a rush when he pushes in, cock filling her so sweetly. Made for her. Her dear, darling boy. Fucking her with small, slow thrusts, bearing against her walls the way she’s asked him to before, bottoming out so pleasurably, that she sucks in another breath only to moan.

“Oh god, yes, baby!” She exclaims throatily, wanting everything of him in that moment, and right now at least, Malcolm seems eager to provide. Working his hips into her in smart, eager circles until he is panting and shaking above her, crying out to be held as he floods her with his release.

After Ainsley… no, that isn’t right. It had nothing to do with her… after  _ Martin _ , Jessica had decided no more children. They were only barely still in fashion when she’d had her last, and at her age? She could never pull off the look.

Now, feeling Malcolm brush a kiss across her cheek, his mess cooling between her legs, she can hardly regret the decision. The bed shakes as he rolls away from her and then lifts as he stands. Jessica sighs and stretches, feeling a pleasant ache wash through her, throbbing warmly between her legs. Throbbing less pleasantly in her head and ugh, that would be the wine.

“Malcolm? Darling? Can I have a glass of water? Thank you!” She calls to him, smiling when she hears the creak of a cabinet. God, it has been ages since she’s had a night this good. Jessica wriggles on his sheets, mussing them further, only stilling when the chain from his cuff jangles at her movement. She wonders what her hair looks like. Hopes it isn’t silly.

He walks back to her nude and depleted, glass held in front of him like an offering. Jessica rolls onto her side to take it, ignoring the less than pleasant slide of her thighs together. It’s cold in her hand, a very different thing than the heat of him had been. Still refreshing. She takes a sip, then another, and then bumps his arm with the glass, transferring the condensation to his bicep so that he places it on the nightstand for her. Sighs again.

“Well that was… oh. Lovely! Hahaa… The whole night really. Minus that bit with the gunmen… But the wedding was lovely, wasn’t it Malcolm?”

She glances up along the smooth line of his hip, his muscled shoulder, so slender but so strong. His eyes are far away for all that he’s warm and close by. This near she can see tiny dark hairs smattering his thighs. Raises a hand and trails fingers over them, trying to quench her disappointment when he doesn’t really move. That’s fine. Sometimes Malcolm needs his quiet. It’s because he’s gifted.

“I thought it was lovely.” Jessica says, shifting to be more comfortable, so that her hip is rounded and waist tucked, should he look over at her. Her hair lay sweaty along her neck, but she ignores it. The apartment has awful water pressure, she knew. She owned it. “Even with all the bougainvillea… tacky stuff. We had lilies at our wedding-”

“Funeral flower.” Malcolm says, and he sounds distant. She hates that, especially now, while he’s drying in a mess between her legs. 

“Ye-es.” She agrees reluctantly. Her lilies had been a pale peach, to go with the light green hydrangea that had been each table's focal point. Her own wedding had been gorgeous, a New York fairytale… even had a monster in it. “But they weren’t- lilies were very in as a wedding flower at the time… Courtney Cox had lilies at her wedding… Well. It was nice to be invited anyway. I’m so glad our name is finally-”

“Your name.” Malcolm says, and oh, he sounds worse… Jessica sits up, pulling the sheet with her so he won’t see gravity’s effect on her breasts and stomach. Not when he is so smooth and young beside her. “Not mine. I’m not a Whitly anymore.”

“You know what I mean.” Jessica says, and when he finally looks at her, his beautiful blue eyes are so dull.

“I don’t, really.” He says, but gently enough that she can tell he isn’t trying to hurt her. “But Ainsley got you the invite.”

“What?” Jessica says.

“You were sitting with journalists and newscasters, mother. All this time you’ve been antagonizing her about... the interview, she’s been fighting for you.”

He says it like she should be proud, but instead Jessica just feels awful. Small in a way that she hates to feel, so much that she didn’t even like thinking about it. The way she feels when she’s the lonely centerpiece to her Manhattan high rise, no guests at her table.

“I didn’t realize.” She says, suddenly regretting every place their skin touches, her sudden shocking upset so singular. She’d thought… She’d thought they’d wanted her there.

“She loves you.” Malcolm says. “The way I love you.”

“Not the same way.” Jessica replies, a little more sorely than she meant and Malcolm sighs. Reaches out and strokes a lock of her hair back into place and Jessica…

When Malcolm was a boy she used to think about what his wedding might be like, and before Ainsley, what a daughter-in-law might be like.

The way he was looking at her, fond and tired and older than she remembers, older every day, makes her think that wouldn’t be in the cards. Not anytime soon. Maybe not ever.

“I need to get to sleep. I have work tomorrow.” Malcolm says, changing the subject with control, but little finesse. “Do you want a shower before you go, or-”

“Before I go?” Jessica scoffs. “I’ll just stay here. It’s far too late to wake up poor Alfonso.”

Malcolm is already shaking his head, and god her headache is really setting in now.

“I didn’t think you’d want to take the couch, and you know I like to strap in to sleep-”

She  _ did  _ know that. Stupid to forget.

“-and after Eve, I hadn’t wanted to risk it-”

“After Eve-”

“Spent the night.” Malcolm says calmly, and Jessica feels some part of her she’d thought long dulled to petty betrayal after the horror show Martin had made of her life, squeeze. He regards her expression, which Jessica knew was carefully held in polite interest, before speaking again. “Should I have told you? We’ve never been excl-”

“No, no sweetie, you’re fine!” Jessica says brightly, and apparently believably, because she watches the minute micro expression of his face relax at her acceptance. And, yes, God, she had stood there and encouraged it but she hadn’t ever thought- “We hardly could be!”

A moment of silence, Jessica mourning the peace she’d felt, drying like sweat on her skin, before she rolls over and stands, the sheet still held across her chest following her like the train on a gown.

“Well.” She says, feeling the turbulent emotions motherhood had brought her, joy and hurt and fear and love, the most dangerous cocktail she’d ever drunk fill her heart. “Would you like me to strap you in before I go?”

“Sure.” Malcolm says, his eyes heavy-lidded from fatigue, and holds out first one wrist for her, then another, patient as she guides leather through metal, coaxing him to rest. Presses a kiss to his head, and then slipped out of the room to dress, leaving the door open behind her.

Jessica has done many bad things. Broken hearts, started rumors, let her husband kill without ever deigning to notice.

Her son is a good thing. She would never let herself regret this.

“Goodnight, Malcolm.” She calls softly, one hand on the door, but gets no response. Already, he’s dead to the world.


End file.
